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What is Billiards
Billiards is a term used in general terms for many different varieties of Cue Sports. Cue Sports are a wide variety of games played with a cue stick. These are games of skill, wherein the object is to control a series of balls by striking one of them, normally the cue ball, to direct it to hit the other balls, on a table which has rubber bumpers on it's side, which like the center of the table is covered by a layer of felt stretched tightly over the surface.
Some people use the term billiards to cover a number of different games on a felt covered table, sort of a generic term for all such games.
There are three recognized, divisions of play, Carom Billiards, Snooker and Pocket Billiards.
Pool or Pocket Pool usually has pockets into which you hit the balls. The table usually has six "pockets". Games such as "Eight-Ball", "Nine Ball", "Straight Pool", "One Pocket" and "Bank Pool". "Nine Ball" is the world's most widely played cue sport.
Carom Billiards, sometimes referred to as the real billiards, refers to games played on tables without pockets, inlcuding Balkline, Straight Rail, Cushion Caroms, Three Cushion Billiards and artistic billiards.
Snooker, which while technically a pocket billiards game, is generally classified separately based on its historic divergence from other games, as well as a separate culture and terminology that characterize its play.
Billiards has a long and rich history, starting in the 1400's. Mary, Queen of Scots body was wrapped in her billiard table cover in 1586. Shakespeare included the famous line "let us to billiards" in Antony and Cleopatra. Thomas Jefferson's dome in his home, Monticello, concealed a billiard room. He hid the room, as billiards was illegal in Virginia at that time.
Many famous enthusiasts of the sport include, Mozart, Louis XIV of France, Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, George Washington, Charles Dickens, George Armstrong Custer, Theodore Roosevelt, Lewis Carroll, W.C. Fields, Babe Ruth, Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason, Tom Cruise and many others.
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